The IMDB describes Jessie Ralph as a "thickset, homely, plump-faced, matronly character actress." Well, yes, but they don’t mention the funny. I’ve seen Jessie in seven movies: Double Wedding, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, After the Thin Man, Camille, Captain Blood, I Live My Life, and Evelyn Prentice.
When she’s not playing a bit part like "Nanine, Camille’s maid," or Errol Flynn’s housekeeper, and sometimes even then, she totally steals the scenes she’s in with her hilarious delivery. Just the way Aunt Katherine says "Nic-o-las" in After the Thin Man sets off the giggles. Whereas May Robson (my other favorite grandma-type) had a high-pitched, sometimes trembly voice, Jessie’s voice was much deeper and perhaps for that reason, lent itself more to comedy. One of her movies I would like to see is Love Is a Headache, where she plays "Sheriff Janet Winfield," because the idea of Jessie as a sheriff, ordering the men folk around, has lots of comedic potential.
Biographical information on Jessie is scarce; other than the fact that she performed on Broadway before coming to Hollywood and was married to a Bill Patton, I can’t find much about her. There's a gap in her career between Such a Little Queen in 1921 and Child of Manhattan in 1933 that I'm at a loss to explain. She died in 1944 in her hometown of Gloucester, Massachusetts, so I’m assuming she retired from pictures and spent her last years at home. (Her final movie was 1941’s They Met in Bombay.) She's buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
One other reason I like her: if she wore glasses, she’d look just like my grandma. :)
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